Page 2 of Exit Strategy
‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m certain.’
‘I can’t promise to triple it again.’
‘But you could double it?’
The new guy returned to the table. ‘It’s possible.’
Reacher went back to his table and watched the man with the beard gather up the bundles of money. The man retrieved the two that had fallen, righted the tipped-over cup, shook the new guy’s hand, then put his arm around the woman’s shoulder and went with her toward the door. They were almost skipping. The new guy set his briefcase down, opened it, and stacked the money inside. He closed it again, locked it, and turned to leave.
The shabby man heaved himself to his feet. He held up his hand, then gestured like he wanted the new guyto join him and the woman at their table. The guy looked around for a moment as if he thought the man must be beckoning to someone else, shrugged, then approached. The men spoke for a moment, then both sat down. Reacher couldn’t hear their conversation. He didn’t need to. He could see what was going on. And he knew what was going to happen next. Two minutes later the shabby man slid a skinny hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out some money of his own. Two bundles of banknotes. Thicker than the ones that had poured out of the briefcase a few minutes before. Maybe five thousand dollars in each one. Ten thousand total. Probably all the old couple could scrape together.
For ten minutes after he sent his text, Nathan Gilmour sat with the phone clutched in his hand. It didn’t beep. It didn’t buzz. Gilmour tossed it onto his desk. It slid across the shiny surface and came to rest next to his keyboard. It looked like the computer mouse’s baby brother. Gilmour stared at it. That beat the view out the window or the sight of the dying flowers, but it wasn’t satisfying. The phone still didn’t beep. It still didn’t buzz. After twenty minutes Gilmour picked it back up. He flipped it open and checked the screen, as if a reply could have sneaked in without him noticing. The display was blank. Gilmour felt a flash of anger, like the phone was conspiring against him. Like it was deliberately blocking any incoming response. He was filled with the urge to hurl it against the wall, wait for the remains to fall, then stomp whatever survived into tiny pieces. He was still fighting the rage when the phone lit up. The message he was waiting forhad arrived. It said,Noon today. It gave an address, which Gilmour knew was not far away. Probably a restaurant or a café, he figured, because the message finished with,Look for a man sitting alone. He’ll be the biggest guy in the place.
TWO
The guy in the coffee shop took out a large manila envelope, slid the two new bundles of cash inside, loaded it into his briefcase, shook hands with the old man and his wife, and made for the door. Reacher drained his coffee and followed. The guy crossed the street, continued past another repurposed warehouse – this one with a couple of clothing stores on the first floor – then dodged into an alleyway. Reacher stopped short and listened. He heard a car door slam and an engine cough into life. He stepped forward and saw a Toyota Camry twenty feet away. It was silver. Not the latest version, Reacher thought, although he couldn’t be sure. He wasn’t much of a car guy.
Nathan Gilmour closed the phone, slipped it into his pocket, and took a moment to run the logistics in his head.He would need maybe fifteen minutes to get to the rendezvous. Walking would be best. And when he got there he would need time to find a vantage point and figure out how and where to deliver his message. It would be tight but he could do it. He took a pad of paper out of his desk drawer and reached for a pen.
Reacher moved toward the car in the alley. The guy who’d had the briefcase was behind the wheel. The couple with the smart clothes who had supposedly made a killing in the futures market were in the back. The man still had his beard but the woman’s hair was no longer black and it was no longer long. It was cut in a tight blond bob. The car began to roll forward. Reacher moved to block its path. The driver hit the brakes. He honked the horn. Reacher stepped closer. The car began to move again. The driver’s foot hovered over the gas pedal. He thought about flooring it but running over some nosy stranger wasn’t part of the plan. It would attract attention. Unless the guy was about to attack, in which case there would be some kind of justification. But no guarantee of success. The stranger was enormous. He looked like a walking bank vault. His hands were like hams. His arms were bigger than some people’s legs. The driver wasn’t sure if the car would be drivable after colliding with a guy his size. There could be major damage and the airbags were bound to be triggered. So he played it safe and went with another blast of the horn.
Reacher was thinking along the same lines, only without doing anything that would cause much damage to himself. He took another step and drove the ball of hisright foot into the center of the car’s radiator grille. He wasn’t certain about the mechanism – he wasn’t much of a car guy after all – but he knew that airbags were designed to deploy in the event of an accident, and he figured that a head-on collision must be a pretty common kind. There had to be a sensor to detect a crash like that. He didn’t know exactly where it would be so he went for power over precision. It worked. The interior of the car was instantly filled with a bunch of billowing white balloons. Reacher spun away toward the driver’s side. The car slowed and stopped and the airbags deflated almost as quickly as they’d appeared. Reacher grabbed the handle and hauled open the driver’s door. He leaned in and took the key out of the ignition. The remnants of some kind of explosive hung in the air. Presumably what had caused the airbags to inflate so rapidly. It bit into Reacher’s nose and mouth but he ignored the sensation, grabbed the driver by the front of his shirt, and pulled him out, too. The guy’s clothes were coated with fine, silvery, slippery dust. He looked a little dazed from the experience. Reacher kicked the door closed, spun the guy around, and told him to step back and lean with his hands against the roof. The guy paused, too stunned to move, then did as he was instructed.
Reacher opened the rear door and hauled out the man with the beard. His body was limp and floppy at first but when Reacher let him go he didn’t fall to the ground. He turned and as he moved he retrieved a blade from his sock with his right hand, then straightened, legs braced, anger contorting his face.
Reacher gestured toward the knife and said, ‘Drop it.’
The man flicked his wrist to the left, then the right,holding the blade vertically, trying to reflect light into Reacher’s eyes.
Reacher said, ‘I have a rule. Pull a knife on me, I break your arm. Drop it now, I’ll make an exception.’
The man lunged at Reacher’s face but stopped short and pulled back. He said, ‘That was a warning. Turn around, run, or I’m going to cut your heart out.’
The driver straightened up and started to turn away from the car. Reacher stretched out his left arm, cupped the back of the guy’s head with his hand, and launched it forward like a basketball. The bridge of the guy’s nose slammed into the top of the doorframe. His head bounced off the metal and he fell straight back onto the asphalt, eyes rolled up, blood pouring from both nostrils.
Reacher turned back to the man with the beard. He said, ‘You’re assuming I have a heart.’
The man shuffled closer and lunged again, this time going for Reacher’s body. Reacher crossed his arms just above the wrists, his left under his right, and drove forward, catching the man’s forearm between the edge of his hands, pushing the blade down and out of harm’s way. The man tried to pull away but he was too slow. Reacher slid his left hand out and down and grabbed the man’s wrist. He twisted it back, locking the man’s elbow. Then he twisted a little farther.
The man yelped with pain. ‘Stop!’ He let go of the knife. ‘I’ve dropped it. I’ve dropped it.’
Reacher said, ‘Too late.’ He kept the tension on the man’s arm with his left hand and brought his right fist down like a hammer just below the elbow. Both bones shattered and the man passed out from the pain before ascream could cross his lips. Reacher dumped his unconscious body on top of the first guy’s and crouched to look into the back of the car. The woman was still in there, but she wasn’t sitting. She was standing in the rear footwell and leaning over the passenger seat, scrabbling to get hold of the briefcase.
Reacher said, ‘Leave it. Get out. This side.’
The woman hooked a finger through the briefcase handle, hauled it up, and slumped back in her seat. Then she shifted her grip and swung the case around between her and Reacher like a shield.
Reacher said, ‘Out.’
The woman didn’t move.
‘You don’t try to hurt me, I won’t hurt you. But if I have to drag you out of there, all bets are off.’
The woman stretched toward the door handle on the far side of the car.
‘Make me chase you and you’ll regret it.’
